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Following the news of billionaire banker David Rockefeller’s passing Sunday morning at the age of 101, we take a look back at the Chase executive’s bizarre and often controversial life.

BREAKING: Billionaire banker David Rockefeller dies aged 101

1.
According to
US diplomatic cables
released by WikiLeaks, Rockefeller was asked by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in March 1979 to help find refuge for the deposed Shah of Iran and his family. The cables note that Rockefeller “
has now agreed to assist in locating alternative refuge for Shah and entourage
”, and that he “
apparently agreed to make discreet approaches
” on behalf of the Shah’s sister.

The cable also said that he wanted to keep his involvement quiet: “
David Rockefeller would like to minimize knowledge of his own involvement in view of interests in Iran
.”

2.
David’s brother, Nelson Rockefeller, was the 31st vice-president of the United States, serving under President Gerald Ford from 1974 to 1977.

3.
Rockefeller
attended
meetings of the secretive Bilderberg Group, frequented by world leaders and influential business people.

4.
One popular online theory surrounding Rockefeller is that he broke the world record for most heart transplants with up to seven, the last one allegedly as recent as last year. However, there’s no record of any patient ever receiving that number of heart transplants – even those who receive two such transplants over their lifetime is .

6.
The wealth amassed by the Rockefeller family has led to an impressive collection, including the bronze gilded Prometheus sculpture by American artist Paul Manship and 15th century
Melissa Joy Manning 14karat Gold Interlocking Ring Y5nm2nQO
gifted to the Met Museum. David Rockefeller’s childhood home – an eight-story mansion at 10 West 54th Street, New York City – is now the site of Museum of Modern Art Sculpture Garden.

Author and Essayist

I had been listening to podcasts, culminating in a session of repeated TED Talks so I would not feel guilty blindly deleting them. I have a tendency to download them with good intentions and then listen instead to conversations about monsters and embarrassing personal stories.

I find the words thick in my throat. I am surprised, since I considered this a more philosophical than immediate question. I start crying and do not stop for half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, while I try to explain myself, having not realized until I started that I might need to.

I don't think people are inherently good or bad. I don't think we are anything beyond accidental.

She points out that subjective terms like "good" and "bad" are a human construction. But we
are
a cosmic accident. There is no nobility or grace in our existence. We are a curious assemblage of amino acids and luck, one whose grip on this planet is waning. The universe does not care one way or other that life exists, because the universe isn't capable of caring. Life did not spark here out of some moral imperative.

The last time I saw my therapist, I confessed that I had been using the eventuality of the sun going nova as a reason to be "cheerfully nihilistic," in that nothing I did mattered in the slightest, so I might as well enjoy myself in my limited time. If I write a world-changing book, if I am a miser, if I become enormously fat, if I spend my life trying to plumb the Marianas Trench, none of it matters. I will die, humanity will die, the Earth will die. We are not clever or united enough to get off this planet, to infest the stars. Even if I did, the ultimate fate of the universe is not conducive to existence, first for life, then for all matter. We mill about our coffin, soon enough (in an astronomical sense) to be pushed in the crematorium. Since I mean nothing, since
we
mean nothing, I might as well pretend I'm happy because my misery is equally meaningless and joy is the delusion that will keep me from self-destruction.